The Most Important Thing I Own
Feb 10, 2025
The package arrived in the middle of a storm. Snow battered the streets, and the wind howled through the spaces between buildings, a living thing with teeth. I was running late, missing buses, fighting against the world itself just to reach my post office box. Some part of me knew—just knew—that I had to get there that day. Not tomorrow, not when the weather cleared. That day.
I didn’t hear from my sister often. We had drifted, not out of malice but out of time and space and life pulling us in different directions. But she had sent me something. My mother told me so. And that mattered.
I knew my sister was sick. And I knew that night was a tough one, a painful one. A night where the weight of it all pressed down on her in ways I would never fully understand. By the time I reached the box, my fingers were half-numb, my raspy breath coming in sharp bursts from the cold. I fumbled with the key, twisted it, and there it was: a small package, unassuming, waiting. I held it close the entire way home, something weighty pressing into my chest, a feeling that wasn’t fear or sadness—just knowing.
When I opened it, a pen lay inside. Not just any pen, but a beautiful one, the kind you keep on a desk and feel important holding. The kind that makes you want to write something meaningful. I picked it up and, without thinking, scribbled a note for my sister —just a few words. This is the most important thing I own. Thank you—for everything. Breathe… (I think I’m saying that to all of us!!) 😊 See you soon ❤️ I sent a picture of it to my mother, something in me needing her to see it, to witness it. My mother showed my sister that note, shortly before she left. Shortly before she took her life.
I’d like to think that maybe her gift to me—the pen—and my acceptance of it gave her some peace about our fractured, frayed, broken relationship. It did for me. That’s why I braved the storm when I heard she had sent me something. Some part of me had to reach it, had to receive it, had to hold it in my hands and prove that even though time and distance had pulled us apart, something still connected us.
An hour later, an anonymous text buzzed on my phone. A number I didn’t recognize. No name. Just the words: Watch the stars…..
I didn’t sleep that night. I don’t know if I even tried. There was something in the air—something electric, something waiting. And in the morning, the phone rang. My mother. Her voice cracked. My sister had taken her own life.
People try to explain grief like it’s linear, like it follows some neat trajectory from shock to sadness to acceptance. But it doesn’t. It’s a storm—wild, unhinged, circling back on itself when you least expect it. One moment you’re fine, and the next you’re standing in the kitchen, staring at the faucet, unable to remember why you walked in there in the first place because your brain is replaying a moment from childhood when you and your sister were laughing so hard that milk came out of your nose.
And then, of course, there’s the guilt. The suffocating weight of it. I had lost touch with her. Could I have changed something? Could I have reached out? Would she have answered? Was the pen a message? A symbol? Was it a goodbye or a beginning of something else? And what about the text? Watch the stars…..
Was that her? Was it some glitch of the universe, a ripple in time, some unknown force sending me a message in the only way it knew how? Or was it just coincidence? But grief doesn’t let you believe in coincidences. It demands meaning. It craves connection.
I started carrying the pen everywhere. Not in a ritualistic way, not at first. It was just there. In my pocket, in my bag, resting on my desk when I worked. And something about it—about holding it, about writing with it—felt like reaching across some impossible distance. I started journaling. Little things at first, memories, questions, words I wished I had said to her. The ink flowed smoothly, as if it wanted to be used.
And then the dreams started.
She was there, but not in the way memory usually works. Dreams of the past are usually hazy, faces blurred, voices muddled. But these were different. Sharp. Detailed. Real. She would sit across from me, pen in hand, writing something I couldn’t quite see. Sometimes she would look up, open her mouth as if to speak, but the dream would end before she could. Other times she just smiled, and that was enough.
I didn’t tell anyone about the dreams at first. They felt too much. Too heavy. Too something I couldn’t put into words. But my mother knew. Of course, she knew.
“There’s magic in that pen,” she reminded me.
I started watching the stars.
I don’t know what I expected to see. Some kind of sign, a message written across the sky, constellations shifting into words I could understand. But mostly, it was just quiet. A different kind of quiet than I had known before—one that didn’t feel empty, but full.
One night, as I sat on my balcony, pen in hand, staring at the sky, I thought about how vast it all was. How we’re all just these small, flickering lights in the dark, here and gone in the grand scale of time. And yet, we reach for each other. Even across distance, across silence, across whatever it is that separates the living from the dead, we reach.
Maybe that’s what my sister was doing. Maybe the pen was her reaching. Maybe the text was. Maybe the dreams. Or maybe it was all just my mind, desperate to create meaning from pain.
But then, does it matter?
Does it matter if the magic was real or if I made it real?
Grief doesn’t end. It just changes shape. Some days it’s a whisper; other days, a storm. Some days I write with the pen and feel like she’s right there, just on the other side of the page. Other days, it’s just a pen, and I am just a person, writing, remembering. But I hold onto it.
Because she sent it to me. Because it mattered. Because some part of me will always believe that there really is magic in that pen.
And because I still watch the stars